


After-guilt

by Baozhale



Series: Tamora Pierce BINGO 2013 [11]
Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce, PIERCE Tamora - Works
Genre: Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:18:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baozhale/pseuds/Baozhale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daja is alone on the ice, and she's mostly in her head. Guilt related to Ben and death and blaming herself.<br/>Melt prompt for BINGO.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After-guilt

After her morning fighting meditation with Jory, Daja strapped her skates to her feet and ventured out onto the ice. When she wasn't busy, either working on the preparations for rebuilding the hospital or with something else, she kept thinking back to Ben. She didn't want her thoughts there, not really, and now that she could skate (mostly) without fear of dying, she found the activity settling. She shoved her skates against the ice, pushing herself faster and faster for no reason other than exhilaration. _I would never have believed this when I got here, but fast is FUN_. _I wonder what Briar would think, seeing me like this._

Soon, she turned towards the forge where she had secured permission to work: for all she could heat metal herself at need, she preferred to save her power for projects that _needed_ it, like the protective spells put on all the metal work for the hospital, even the nails. _Nails_. _It's always nails._ Daja laughed inwardly. She had been complaining about the drudgery of nails for years, but this winter she had made more nails than she had thought possible, with door latches, flatware, pans, and bolts interspersed when she truly thought she could not take another moment of nails. It was for a good cause, an important one, so she tried not to complain about it, but truly, there was a limit to how many nails she could make. That's why today was to be a bit of a break. She was running low on the jewelry she had been selling to give the money to the new hospital, and making new stock would do well to relieve the boredom of nails.

She didn't realize she'd forgotten to pay attention to her skating until she was face-down in now-melting snow. _Oops. Just because I can skate quickly when I'm paying attention doesn't mean I can skate quickly always._ She could almost hear Frostpine saying that he simply _must_ have a flaw, or else he would be too perfect to deal with. She dragged herself out of the snow to see that she had, once again, left a perfect imprint of herself melted into the snow pile, down to the fingers on her gloves. Everyone was staring, just as they did all the _other_ times she had done the same. _They get used to mages, but only when we stick to normal mage things. I kind of miss that about Winding Circle: people got used to having the weird magics around._ She looked down, trying to avoid the stares. It was hard to feel like they weren't accusing her, even though she knew- most of them didn't know Ben had _had_ special gloves, and most of those who knew wouldn't recognize her as the mage who made Ben's magic gloves. She was too young, in their minds. That didn't keep it from _feeling_ like the stares accused her. Really, she accused herself. She still saw the hospital burning and the ice melting from the heat and the people burning in her sleep, and no matter how much Frostpine tried to tell her it wasn't her fault... part of her still felt like she should have known better than to make those living metal gloves for Ben. Part of her was afraid to make things out of living metal ever again. Today was not the day she would. Today would just be gold. 


End file.
